Brand New - Science Fiction (August 17, 2017) [ARCHIVED] Album • Page 491

Passed out on the overpass, Sunday best and broken glass. Broken down from the bikes and bars, suspended like spirits over speeding cars. You and me we're kings over the parkway tonight.

vs

I'd drown all these crying babies
If I knew that their mothers wouldn't cry
I'd hold them down and I'd squeeze real soft
And let a piece of myself die

 

Always

 

Look, most songs on TDAG are lyrically some of their best.

But drowning babies is worse than hoping an adult dies in a car crash.

Lyrically, might be their worst song.

And this is coming from someone who loves Handcuffs

 

Give me A please

 

I gotta go with Blakebeats here

 

Now this isn't because I'm a big YFW fan

It's literally the drowning babies lyric ruins the songs lyrically.

I still enjoy the song but in the lyrics department it's one of their weaker songs on an album that was full of fantastic lyrics

 

And they way they play Soco live with Jesse solo with the electric is so fucking good.

 

I mean, I don't really think the rest of the Handcuffs lyrics are very good either.

I'd drive my car off of the bridge
If I knew that you weren't inside
Put the pedal to the floor, who could ask for more
A fantastic way to kill some time

 

The worst lyric in "Handcuffs" is I'd arrest you if I had handcuffs and even that's not terrible.

Some of the other lyrics may be uncomfortable and hard to listen to, but that's kind of the point.

 

My favorite line from Handcuffs is the last chorus because of how it ties back to Sowing Season.

It’s hard to be the better man
When you forget you’re trying
It’s hard to be the better man
When you’re still lying
You’re still lying

Not my favorite song by any stretch of the imagination, but that line always gets me. Seeing it last fall was the first time of the 3 times I've seen it where I felt they finally did it justice live.

 

Handcuffs makes perfect sense to me lyrically. I had a brief discussion about this in the MewithoutYou thread, but as someone who struggles daily with impulsive and paranoid thought patterns as a result of mental illness, I've always viewed the song as a fight for balance between the dark, twisted part of the mind and the rational part of the mind. I think "it's hard to be the better man when you forget you're trying" serves as a sort of thesis statement for the entire album, and when the lyrics in the verses are compared against it, they make a lot more sense to me. It's a matter of context. The drowning babies, the car going off a bridge; it's obviously not literal, and it's obviously meant to be a hyperbolic description of how dark the mind can truly be. It's the opposite of flattering, much like Desert or Me Vs. Maradona. I understand why it may rub some people the wrong way - it certainly is abrasive and disturbing - but the context is really important.

 

You said it much better than I could have

 

Thank you, haha, it's the English major in me. I've always felt that the lyrics in Handcuffs are unfairly judged.

 

Nailed it!

 

@sophos34

 

I got a job
So let me find 10 million distractions

This is definitely about writing the record ha

yea once I'm done listening to the record I'm going to put this on!

 

Context is important. Unfortunately, Handcuffs exist in the bad/weak song context.

I'll still listen to it, and enjoy parts of it... But it's not good.

 

Didn't Vin write the "Handcuffs" lyrics? It definitely stands out, and I think that's why.

I absolutely love it musically. Certain lines are questionable, perhaps moreso than most of Jesse's lyrics, although his aren't infallible themselves.

 

Champ goes down like a clown in the second round

 

Yes, he did

 

I really wonder how much Vin contributed lyrically to this album. Almost all of this feels very much like Jesse's writing

 

I think vin wrote some of the lyrics on same logic

 

Fish line for sure haha

 

Slowly floss your holy molars

That's a much worse line, IMO